Hands-On Chaos Magic: Reality Manipulation through the Ovayki Current - Andrieh Vitimus 2009

Sigil Magic I: Sigil Creation

Sigil Magic: The General Principle

Consciously willing to have something very rarely works. The mind loves to play sick games on and with itself. Having the conscious desire often triggers a host of ego complexes revolving around anxiety over failure, self-worth issues, or fear of success (since that would conflict with the psychic censor). Sigil magic instead tries to work the will through the greatest magician-the subconscious-thus bypassing the ego complexes and the mind altogether. How does this process happen? Once people move toward gnosis, they are moving toward less and less conscious control over the process.

Back to Shadowland and the Psychic Censor

We talked about outside influences and external desires. We talked about fear and the shadow. Now all of these issues play directly into sigil magic. For instance, let's say you cast magic to attract a lustful, beautiful blonde bombshell, or a Calvin Klein male underwear model. This is a common example of a mistake, but why? First, those types of models are rare. Second, and even more importantly, those models are illusions carefully constructed by placement, color, mood, and other techniques. Essentially, the desire for such a commodity and social symbol is a desire for a ghost (or, in this case, a carefully crafted corporate succubus/ incubus). As your desire grows, you may go through the needed steps to obtain that "impossible" ghost. This process almost certainly involves buying something. Giving this intent to the subconscious could provoke an obsession.

The deconditioning process from the first part of our adventure is needed precisely because of this. What does it help to do a ritual for a meme-created desire? Not to mention, if you haven't grasped for selftransformation, who's to say your "unmanifest" gestalts won't subconsciously reach out to bring you the opposite of what you wanted or, even worse, exactly what you wanted?

For example, you cast a sigil spell for a raise in a job you hate. You end up getting fired. Even a novice psychologist can point out the cognitive dissonance. Or in the model we provided, a different part of you galvanized the hate at the ritual point and manifested that alternate desire. Still think the first part of the adventure was a waste of time?

To reiterate, the key to sigil magic is to be specific about what you actually want. The sigil is an encapsulation of your desire, a manifestation of your will, sent into the dark closet of your subconscious mind. In my opinion, it's important to have done the self-work to know what you want as opposed to what someone else wants you to want (so you are sure you want it), not to mention have enough understanding to know where it could go wrong. Paraphrasing Spare, evoking (or enchanting for) something necessitates the existence of its opposite (of failures) (Carroll 1987). Keep that in mind as you go forward.

Desire of Result

Sending things to the subconscious seems like a good idea. By bypassing the neuroses of the ego complex, individuals can purely manifest their will via their subconscious. Great! So why does it not always work? There are many reasons why something doesn't work (e.g., conflicting parts of the self), but the lust of the result is often a contributing factor. Let's say you cast a spell for fast cash. You keep thinking about all the ways you are going to spend that fast cash before you have received it. Now, the sigil might work, but at this point it's unlikely. Why? The issue has become clouded. Is it cash you want, or all the things you have tied to the cash? Essentially, you have hamstrung the subconscious and confused/diluted the intent after the fact. So a second key to sigil magic is to simply forget the intent and then destroy the physical sigil or mantra. Now, this is truly the hardest part of the equation for most magicians, since they wouldn't be casting a spell if they didn't need something. This can go too far as well. In trying to forget the sigil, some magicians become neurotic whenever any thought about a spell pops into their minds. Negative attention is still attention. Focusing on and getting upset about the memory of intent is, in a way, still focusing on the intent. Take a hint from Zen: let the thought flow in and out, giving it no credence. We will talk more about that in the next chapter.

Want something? Cast the spell and detach.

What Are Sigils Actually?

A sigil is any encapsulation of a desire in the form of a statement of intent that is not immediately recognizable by the conscious mind. This form could be verbal, musical, graphical, olfactory, structured as a sequence of events ... anything is possible. For a street magician, this broad definition opens possibilities and allows for greater flexibility of use.

The Statement of Intent

The statement of intent should be in your native language and boldly state what you want to happen. This is the basis of what the sigils, workings, invocations, evocations, and mantras are made of.

Let's look at some examples:

Example Set 1

Bad: "I would like to win some money at poker tonight."

Good: "It is my will to win money at poker tonight."

Even better: "It is my will to win approximately 66% of the money pool at poker tonight." (Reasonable with a little luck.)

Perhaps a little unreasonable (but that depends on you): "It is my will to win all of the money at poker tonight."

Example Set 2

Bad: "I would like to find a nickel at the corner of Western and Chicago tomorrow."

Still bad but might work: "It is my will to find a nickel at the corner of Western and Chicago tomorrow."

Better: "It is my will to find a nickel on the street within the next two weeks."

Now, the difficulty of the magic often depends on the statement of intent. "I would like" and similar lackluster statements don't inspire the will to do anything. Stand and speak with conviction. It will be successful because it is your will. The difficulty of the task relates to how difficult the task is to manifest. Obviously, in Example Set 2, finding a nickel at the corner of Western and Chicago is very specific, which is good, but it gives little room for the magic to work. If you stood on the corner of Western and Chicago, I am sure that within the day, the nickel would manifest. However, it's more likely that a person would go to the corner of Western and Chicago, walk around and not see a nickel and leave. So that leaves a fifteen-minute window for the magic to manifest. Everything is possible, but success in this spell is not likely. The last nickel intent is good. There is room for the magic to work, as well as a clear desire.

I am sure that many of you have heard the axiom "Magic will take the path of least resistance." Any intent you wish to sigilize and cast must have a path to manifestation or else it will fail, or worse. By giving the magic a little leeway, you give it more paths to manifest. Of course, by not being specific, you might be very surprised at what you actually get. Statements of intent are very much balancing acts, and as you practice more you will get better at picking the right intent, knowing what you really want, and knowing what are acceptable ways for the magic to manifest-all of which you will be able to incorporate into the statements of intent. One example of a bad result of a spell for quick money is to get the inheritance from an uncle you love dearly. Clearly that's a very bad way for the spell to manifest.

After the Sigil is Made, Double-Check with Divination

Once you have your sigil, it is very useful when you are first starting out with this type of magic to double-check if the sigil is correct for what you want to do at that point in time. A simple yes/no answer from a pendulum is a good start; however, I feel a full divination on the matter will be more helpful. This is not a book on divination; there are several good systems and books on that subject. Personally, I like the tarot, but anything but astrology or palm reading would probably work to verify what the sigil will do. (Astrology and palm reading are more fixed events that do not give you an immediate answer to the question.) It would initially seem that the question to divine should be "Will this sigil work as I have planned?" This is a good yes/no question to ask when using a pendulum or flipping a coin. By changing the question, you can get more information about your process of sigilization and intent. Make the question "What will be the effect of using this sigil?" The divination might turn up interesting side corollaries, benefits, or even "gotchas" that have to be considered.

Spare/Carroll Sigilization

The Spare/Carroll method of sigilization is very easy technically, but in my opinion it contains elements of divination within the sigil itself. The sigil is built directly out of the subconscious, and going into a slight (or greater) trance state while sigilizing the intent seems to assist its reliability.

The process is simple.

Write out your statement of intent. For example:

It is my will to see a blue bird within two weeks.

Drop all the duplicate letters.

The example intent becomes

ITSMYWLOEABURDHNK

Rearrange the letters so they are not in the same order as the original intent. (This is optional; I just like to do this. Figure out how it works best for you.)

RDWHEABUYLOITSMNK

Copy this new combination of letters to a new sheet of paper.

TO ARTISTIC GLYPH

Use the remaining letters to draw a glyph and create the glyph spell. Now, the letters you have are merely artistic guidelines. You can twist and contort the letters however you need to. If you feel that something should be added to the glyph, add it. If you feel that something should be taken away from the glyph, take it away. As you keep artistically modifying the glyph, try to make it simpler and simpler in design till you get a glyph that is as simple as possible but still appealing to you.

This is an example of sigilizing our intent.

Sigil Exercise

Let's try some of this out, shall we?

Using the Spare/Carroll method, make an artistic glyph and then check it with divination to see what the result of using it will be. The intent should be something that you don't care about either way, that has no emotional attachment. It may even be whimsical.

For example, an intent could be:

It is my intent to see a woman with red shoes.

Outside of some refined fetishists, this intent probably has no emotional effect or desire component.

TO MANTRA FORM

Go back to our working letter set after we dropped the duplicates from the intent ("It is my will to see a blue bird within two weeks") and randomly rearranged the letters. At this point that is:

RDWHEABUYLOITSMNK

Use these remaining letters to verbalize a mantra to create the mantra spell. Those who care about musical tonality may wish to ensure that the verbal mantra flows according to various rules of music. Try to add letters or take them away based on whether or not you like or dislike the mantra. Personally, I tend to duplicate or add vowels.

Character set:

RDWHEABUYLOITSMNK

Mantra 1: HeaBuoYitasmonkdriewl

seems too complex

Simplify: Hea Bow Yita Driel

Well, I like this mantra, but your tastes might vary.

Remember, it is helpful to go into a light trance or even a heavier trance before starting to sigilize any intent.

Mantra Exercise

Using the Spare/Carroll method, make a mantra glyph and then check it with divination to see what the result of using it will be. Again, the intent should be something that you don't care about either way, something that has no emotional attachment and may be whimsical.

Carroll Pictorial Method/ Shamanistic Method of Sigilization

Peter Carroll also talks about a pictorial method of sigilization. It's easy to see how to do that in the following illustration:

The process is simple. Start with a line drawing or basic sketch that encapsulates your intent. Reduce the lines and shapes to a very simple sigil that you can remember. There is a long history of this type of sigilization. In my humble opinion, cave paintings seem very similar to this method, as cave dwellers graphically depicted what they desired. This brings me to my next sigilization method: automatic drawing.

Automatic Drawing/Writing/Music and Other Automatic Sigils

In honor of the grandfather of chaos magic, here is a method that I sometimes use for spellcraft when I have time. A. 0. Spare was a huge proponent of automatic drawing, and he would often embed hidden spells into his drawings, using the automatic drawing process to allow his subconscious to essentially manifest the spell on the canvas. To be as good at art as Spare was does take some time, but the methodology seems sound even if you are only doodling. Artists, magicians, writers, and some programmers will all claim that they go into a trance state where the task at hand sometimes completely takes over. Clearly this is a form of gnosis, and if you are able to let the trance take over, it is possible to manifest the spell automatically on your chosen medium without the verbal reduction techniques supplied earlier. This technique is not easy to teach, however, and the student is encouraged as always to try this out, but a general framework for doing something like this in any artistic medium could be the following:

1. Become proficient in progressive relaxation meditation.

2. Declare your statement of intent.

3. Start drawing, playing an instrument, or writing while clearing out the thoughts in your head.

4. Do not stop to criticize any creative ideas or desires that come into the conscious mind. Essentially, just play them, code them, draw them, write them down, etc.

5. Keep going until the conscious mind is no longer criticizing, thinking about, or otherwise modifying the ideas that are flowing from the subconscious. Throughout the process, the individual should be trying to go deeper into the "muse" while continuing the meditation.

6. Stop when you feel like the sigil is finished. More than with other forms of sigilization, you have to intuitively know when to stop. That could be thirty minutes or ten hours (there really cannot be a set time, given the nature of the task; when it's done, it's done).

Random Sigils in the Environment

Another fun way to do sigil magic is to declare a statement of intent, and then find a sigil somewhere in the environment that will work for you. In my case, I drive around Chicago repeating my statement of intent (or mantra) until I happen to see a particular piece of graffiti that seems like it will work. I empower that sigil and go with it (I may have had no idea what the sigil originally meant, but for me it now means whatever my intent is). I have also heard of several magicians using random patterns in tree bark, clouds, or even ripples in the dirt as their sigils. Be creative. The glyphs are all around us.

Other Interesting Sigil Ideas

There are a few other interesting ways to make sigils that I want to mention. This is solely for you to see how creative you can be with the sigil-making process. Don't feel limited to Spare's technique. Take the ideas and run with them.

First, use a program to randomly generate a sigil. Kiamagic.com has some interesting tools for this. Start with intent, and generate a sigil from the website. A second interesting sigil technique I have started to practice is to use a Go board, an Othello board, or even a checkerboard to create a sigil (really, any game in which players place chips on a game board can work). Essentially, I concentrate on the intent while playing the game. The end product can produce a nice sigil, which I have used with the methods in the next chapter to get real-world results.

These two methods are just a few examples of how creative you can be with your magic. Explore, experiment, and see what you can come up with. I am sure that there are hundreds of other ways to create sigils; feel free to explore them all.

Symbolic Training

To me (and most relevant to the rest of the book), sigil magic has the added benefit of starting to train the mind to work in a sort of symbolic logic. We do work in symbolic logic all the time, but it's a comfortable symbolic logic that is assumed to be real (and hence the psychic censor works against it). This new type of symbolic logic is more of a subconscious expression than a conscious one. When you practice with pre-made sigils, it will make working with defined systems easier, since you will be working with symbols more often. In fact, if you are using the Spare method of sigilization, you are doing some divination techniques on the spot. It's a way of working with the subconscious mind, training the conscious mind to interact with the subconscious.

The next chapter will cover how to use the sigils you have created or found by empowering them, and it will also cover the pitfalls of sigil magic. Try to create a few sigils and lose the original intent for a while. Make sure they are simply things that don't matter that much. After all, this is practice and play.